Published by: World Tibet Network News Sunday, January 18, 1998

By Dana Thomas

Special to The Washington Post

Monday, January 12, 1998; Page A03

PARIS-On the world's highest plain, in theouter reaches of Tibet, French explorer Michel Peissel was tracing ancient trading routes when he stumbled upon a cluster of curious-looking dome-shaped structures made of mud and brick.

Though they were unusual, Peissel, an ethnologist and anthropologist, didn't think much of the igloo-looking huts at first, dismissing them as many have before him as chortens, a type of Buddhist monument.

But when Peissel took a closer look, he found that the structures were actually living quarters, which could make them the world's highest dwellings.

Moreover, the structures, which Peissel dubbed "beehive houses," could be the remains of the long-lost pre-Buddhist kingdom of Shang Shung.

"These houses could be remnants of that ancient mysterious kingdom," said Peissel during a recent interview over a cup of tea in his Left Bank apartment.

For more than a century, explorers have been searching to no avail for the remains of Shang Shung. The kingdom was ruled for centuries by the Bon shamans, an ancient pre-Buddhist religion, until it was conquered in 645 by the Songtsen Gampo, the unifier of Tibet and the first great Tibetan king. Shang Shung generally is thought by Tibetan specialists to have been located in the Changthang region.

The archaic mud-brick houses, which today shelter Tibet's most northern nomads in the winter, are round and dome-shaped, with the top lopped off for a chimney. It's the unique shape that suggests a strong Persian influence, Peissel said.

"Shang Shung had links to the West -- it was known to have contact with Persia -- which could be where the dome comes from," Peissel said. "The vault and dome are unknown in Tibet. It's a very archaic form that comes from the West -- from the days when Persia went up to the border of Tibet and before the days of Alexander the Great."

The buildings indicate that Tibet's earliest emigres may have been from the West.

"They may well be connected with structures west of Tibet," said Heather Stoddard, a Tibet scholar and professor at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris, "and probably come from the Middle East -- Syria, Persia, and maybe Afghanistan. There's a whole architectural zone across that goes from Middle East straight through to Tibet."

She added that the houses were probably overlooked by previous explorers because "from a distance, they resemble other nomad structures. Nomads pile up all sorts of yak dung to make structures that look like this." However, even yak dung shelters were never found so far north on the Changthang plain.

Peissel believes the discovery of the beehive houses, which was confirmed last month during an International Symposium on Tibetan Architecture, may solve some of the mysteries of Tibetan history and culture.

Each summer, the Tibetan nomads trek to the center of the Changthang, the 16,500-foot-high desolate plain in the northern part of the country, to collect salt along the banks of the region's aqua blue saline lakes. The salt is loaded in 20-pound sacks and strapped onto the backs of sheep, which the nomads herd south to market. There the nomads trade the salt for grain, for nourishment. "These neolithic salt routes are still traveled today," said Peissel. "This trade has been going on for millenniums."

Peissel had set out in early October with his colleague, English explorer Sebastian Guinness (of the brewing family) on a 2,000-mile journey to retrace these salt routes when he happened upon the adobe igloos.

It was long thought that no one could survive the winter in the barren wasteland of the Changthang, a remote region the size of Texas that is perhaps the world's last virgin ecological zone and home for exotic and endangered animals such as wild equids, blue sheep, seven-foot-tall Tibetan yaks, black neck cranes, snow leopards and herds of zebra-size kiang -- the Tibetan wild ass -- which run for miles and miles across the tundra at the foot of the snow-covered mountains.

Yet two tribes of nomads -- the Sengo of the Gertse-Oma region, and the Sumpa -- inhabit the Changthang, where it freezes 280 days a year. "The secret of their survival at such altitudes in the winter has now been revealed as both tribes build variations of these oven-like domed shelters on their winter grazing lands," Peissel said.

The Sengo nomads call their variation of these mud igloos "Mongo Phu," which means Mongol caves. The Sumpa dubbed theirs "Bug-ri," or hollow hills. The nomads weather the blistering cold winters on the plain in these dwellings, heated by fires fueled by yak and sheep dung. "Inside," said Peissel, "it's just like a kiln -- a human furnace."

In the summer, the nomads live in yak hair tents, which they pack up and move as they roam the land looking for adequate pasture for their yaks and horned sheep.

Peissel, author of "The Last Barbarians," a book published this month about his 1994 discovery of the source of the Mekong River in Tibet, has been traveling for 38 years to the Himalayan country that China has occupied since 1950. In 1964, Peissel claims to have found the lost kingdom of Mustang.

Two years ago, while crossing an isolated Tibetan valley near the Chinese border, Peissel came across the little Riwoche horse, an archaic breed similar to the ponies painted on cave walls by the first Homo sapiens during the Upper Paleolithic period.

As always, Peissel's trip to Tibet in October -- his 26th -- was a perilous journey. At the furthest point from their starting point in Lhasa, and not far from the Pakistani border, the Range Rover carrying all of the fuel their entire journey veered off the road and tumbled 300 feet down a ravine. The cook and the driver were injured and the fuel was lost. The team was stuck for days waiting for a new truck with supplies to reach them so they could continue the voyage. "It was quite an adventure," Peissel said with a laugh.

Indeed. "There are not so many people who go to Tibet and not so many people who go on adventures like Michel Peissel," said Stoddard. "Few people go where he goes."